We thought that the somewhat underpowered Nokia 500 wouldn't get the Belle OS update for some weeks or even months, but it seems that Belle's rolling out for this device from today, possibly even giving the phone a new burst of performance. Some details and quotes from Nokia below.

Entitled Nokia Belle on Nokia 500 from today, the official piece says:

Nokia Belle will start to be rolled out to Nokia 500 owners today in most countries. It will be released in phases, country by country, as soon as each relevant variant of the latest Symbian software is available... The majority of Belle enhancements will be available for the Nokia 500 including:

• new features such as HD video recording at 30 frames per second (the 500's video capture was previously limited to VGA)
• a visually improved browser enabling high-quality Web video viewing

This version of Belle has been specifically tailored to match Nokia 500’s hardware performance. You can personalize your Nokia 500 with up to four home screens leaving all your favourite applications and services only a few taps away.

As with other Belle updates, you will also get Nokia Maps version 3.06. Check the availability for your Nokia 500 in your country at our support pages.

It'll be interesting to see how Belle's improved RAM management improves the slightly shackled 500 under Symbian Anna. And I'm dying to see if the claim about improved video capture is true - I'd previously believed The article's writer has now removed the erroneous info about video recording - it seems I was right about the VGA/15fps being a hardware limitation.

Steve, AAS.